Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Wednesday 19 July 2023

Reappraising William Camden


Last Friday I attended online a day conference organised by the Society of Antiquaries about the life and work of William Camden who died four centuries ago in 1623. 

Not only was he a founder of the original Society of Antiquaries and a pioneering antiquarian researcher of firstly Roman and then medieval remains, but also a historian of his own times with his officially sponsored Annals of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a collaborator with his former pupil Sir Robert Cotton in preserving medieval manuscripts, a member of the College of Arms from 1598 as Clarenceux King of Arms, and generally a back room boy of later Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

Amongst the subjects discussed at the conference was new work on the manuscript of the Annals which has used modern technology to look through Camden’s paste downs to see how he amended and revised his account of the later years of the Queen’s reign and, in particular, the background to the tacit acceptance of the succession passing to King James VI of Scots.

This research is explained in a post on the British Library Medieval Manuscripts Blog at Showing Elizabeth I in a new light



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